


Memento Mori

by Aris



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bulimic Tendencies, Catholic Guilt, Eating Disorders, Growing Up, Hospitalization, Kind of the ending sucks, M/M, Starvation, Time Skips, when am i going to stop writing eating disorder fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 22:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8227093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: Hells Kitchen's pantry is empty, and the Devil eats nothing. 
 or; Matt has an eating disorder.





	

Matt doesn't know much about money growing up - not in the way adults talk about it, his idea a vague concept with little comparisons to material objects. Some things are more, some things are less, and either way the Murdocks never can quite afford it. When Matt asks after something, the backback at school the cool kids have, a new brand of trainer everyone has in PE or the overpriced big-company chocolate bars everyone's a little mad over, Jack Murdocks face always tightens a little, his eyes go a little smaller and his smile is thinner and colder, but never all the way cold. He says:

 

"Maybe, Matty,"

 

He stops asking when Emma Klastle from the fancy neighbourhood on the rim of Hells Kitchen says it's his dad's fault her dad, a banker who has no bussiness in a boxing club, lost money last night and that now she can't get the new Bratz accessroy set because Daddy cut her pocket money. 

 

Matt doesn't get pocket money. He asks about that, instead, and his dad just ruffles the hair on his head, a 'Sorry, kid. Have you done your homework?' being the only answer. It took him a long, long while to realise he doesn't get pocket money, because there is no money to pocket. Nothing extra. Nothing spare. Jack Murdock picks foods carefully in the cornershop, lingering hands and mouthed numbers, guilty looks and frustrated staring.

 

So, Matt cuts corners and eats less, skips lunch and tucks the extra bread away for his dad after fights, when he's always hungry and never gets enough, bloody and full of hard won adrenaline. He'll eat it in fast and quickly, and he won't think about why they now have bread leftover on a Friday night, when they're usually out by Wednesday.

 

It feels good to give back, even a little bit, and the hunger pangs and warnings about never growing tall are worth the smiles, the fully happy ones, where Jack has enough energy to joke about baseball teams, the funny people in the crowd that night and halfheartedly tries to help Matt with his maths work. 

 

It's worth it.

 

Hells Kitchen's pantry is empty, and the Devil eats nothing.

###### 

He remembers, from being younger, conversations adults would have over him and articles in waiting rooms - never at home - about tasting with your eyes. The phrase had always sounded funny to Matt. Food was made to look appealing, the part that Matt did understand, but Matt had never been very particular about food and most of it was appetizing on the basis of edibility alone. 

 

_Food is fuel, Matty._

 

No, being picky had come later, when chemicals trickled under his lashes and seared flames into his vision that never quite left. Pickiness came with the horrifying distinction of chemical flavourings, the sour taste of preserved meat and the vivid truth that meat, no matter how much you dressed it up and slathered it in spices, was decaying. Rotting in his mouth with bursts of pesticide ridden herbs and fake flavourings. 

 

He hasn't eaten meat since.

 

The nuns tell him he should be thankful he has food to eat, that God has provided this for him so he may continue his service. God has packaged this ground meat for you, salted these vegetables, God has, in all his wisdom, spared you half the price for this affordable out of date can of mushy peas that he can taste the saturated mold in.

 

He can't eat what God provides, so he fasts for him. Waste not, want not. Any food he eats is a waste

 

Stick calls him a faithful idiot when he passes out in training and spikes his carefully planned, organic and local, meal with Arsenic. The old man disappears, and Matt never eats tomato soup again.

###### 

By eighteen, Matt struggles to eat most foods. He panics, sometimes, with new flavours, neutral ones which he can’t quite pinpoint, and ends up avoiding them out of a deep rooted fear and clenching feel in his chest.

He has a scholarship to Colombia and though accommodation is included, it’s fully catered. His only meals are prepared by others, left out on trays for hours and crawling with deep salt and chemical flavours. It burns his tongue. He drinks lots of water, bottled, free from the gym on campus - tap water is sometimes okay, and other times enough to induce nausea. He lives his life on this balance. Food will make or break his day, even water.

It feels like everything that enters his body turns to rot and dust.

Foggy hates the cafeteria food, too. He accompanies Matt, complaining the whole time while loading up his plate and nudging Matt to pick up something more than an apple he already knows is crawling with too much. Foggy says it’s nothing like his mum’s cooking back home, or even his own, and carelessly promises Matt he’ll cook him something someday so he’d stop looking like the picture of catholic guilt.

“You’re looking less and less like a heart throb and more like a prime candidate for a heart attack,”

The suggestion that Foggy would be in his life for more than a moment caused something warm and close to fit comfortably in his chest. Mash potatoes two weeks old and salted far too generously couldn’t bring him down, and neither could throwing it up with too much stomach acid before a two hour lecture on land management laws.

University is dizziness, spacing out in classes and desperately catching up late at night after his singular meal, the only time the world would sharpen into focus - except for time spent at the gym, where adrenaline would hone his tired mind and body into something dangerous and far sharper than the edges of his ribcage.

University is getting drunk with Foggy, after two shots because Matt never really liked to drink, before, and an empty stomach does nothing to ease the sudden torrent of alcohol hitting his bloodstream. It’s Foggy’s warm hands on his back, or his hand, helping him grip his cane with his numb fingers, and it’s waking up to Foggy boiling water for him, because he knows he can’t drink it otherwise, and Foggy carrying his washing basket down to the machines, smelling of detergent and ground cinnamon.

University is the fogginess in his head, and the Foggy in his bed.

(After spilling vodka on his own bed, of course.)

###### 

As an adult, with a job and a fully functioning bank account and no discounts based purely on his position as a student, it becomes startlingly clear he cannot afford to eat what he can stand. Organic vegetables and local fruits can’t be carefully scrubbed to rid them of the faint truces of manure and rain when Matt can’t afford to buy them, anyway, and no washing in the world can scrub away the ingrained bitterness and sickening poison that inhabits every cell of those vegetables on the 3-for-1 sale in the nearest, cheapest supermarket.

It sets alight an anxiety in his stomach, pulling at something urgent, when he is forced to pick out with shaky hands fruit he knows he’s going to throw up and bring it past the doorway into his home, this warm corner of the earth, to taint at the fridge draws and the chipping coating of his plates. The taste won’t come out, and he cleans and cleans till his hands bleed, tremble, and it’s all in vain, because tomorrow he’ll bring out the same food and he’ll chop it on the same board and serve it on the same plate. 

Contaminated.

He flushes the grime from his system. Systematically. With blood. He lets the polish man, a nasty lacky of some drug dealer or other, get a hit in so hard his head rings and faint pesticide leaks from his system with the blossoming scarlet of his split lip. He punches back, sweats out the poisons in his tap water, breaks the skin on his knuckles and smiles so wide his bloody lips burn.

Detox.

Purify.

Foggy is worried. And Matt keeps telling him nothing is going on, everything is fine, even as he cuts lunch out of his day because he can’t stand another drop of someone else saliva in his stomach, wouldn’t be able to chew through another salad which the heavy vinegar flavour of which can’t quite conceal the tell tale sting of cat shampoo and flour. His head aches terribly, but he tells Foggy he just needs to get more sleep, and maybe they can go to Josie’s and drink that weird glass container, even thought he knows he’s rather claw his trachea to pieces, first.

He tells Foggy these little compartmentalized lies, tries his best to convince him, right up to the point he passes out.

In the hospital, Foggy is angry and he’s scared and he’s guilty. Almost enough to match up to Matt’s own catholic brand. Matt turns his eyes to the covers in moments where he can’t quite focus, feels like he’s viewing from a white faded filter - an art piece, 18th century, a fiery fog eclipses the devil. The image forms disjointedly in his head, patching together every tiny sound and distant little memories of what the A&E beds looked like when his father ended up there after a fight. 

Somewhere distant, Foggy is laughing through a cracked throat about Matt looking all tragic like in those church stained glass windows. He’s laughing and holding Matt’s limp hand like it’s the only thing anchoring him to the narrow bed side. It rings wrongly in his head, as something twisted and too sour to bespilling from Foggy’s sunny, smiley face.

His heart aches in his chest. He did this. All the hand washing and cleaning and spilling of blood and sweat couldn’t stop the dirty wrongness from slipping into Foggy with every casual, comforting touch. 

This is Matt’s fault.

“Hey, hey. Matt, Matty.”

His partner has leaned across his bed, the scent of his deodorant intensifying and wrapping around Matt in a sudden instance. Matt feels like he should be holding his breath, or looking back, out of courtesy.

“You’re going to get through this - I don’t know how long this has been going on for, but I think... I think probably long before I met you,” And the death grip on his hand is suddenly something so soft there’s a fresh wave of something precious squeezing at his ribs, “And I don’t think it will be easy, and I think it’s going to hurt both of us - Matty, I think it’s going to be really fucking hard, you know? I don’t even know where to start, there’s so many things I don’t even know how to...”

He shakes his head. His hair drags audibly on the upturn of the collar on his favourite coat.

“But we can figure this out. Together. Like we do with everything, no -” He catches Matt’s side before he can shift away,, “Don’t block me out, okay? I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to fix this, and I’m going to be there, at your side, because you mean - fuck, this is going to soppy, Matt - you mean the world to me, you know? I can’t imagine getting up without you in my life.

I know you hate this, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but while I’ve got you pinned here I’m going to make use of it, damn it. That mind of yours is probably tearing apart this situation in ways I can’t imagine, but I know that kicked puppy expression when I see it. It’s not your fault. I’m going to help you - I,” Foggy is tearing up now, salt tanging the air and cracked lips pulling up with every tremble that makes his words come out in a heart-stopping pitch. Matt is reminded of summers at Foggy’s house, managing to smile through his aching stomach because of how his whole home always smelled of fresh cut flowers, deep cinnamon he can’t place a single containment in and something warmingly familiar. A sense he has never been able to place, never been able to pin point, but something that fills him to the brim with a contentment he wouldn’t dare to compare to anything else.

“I’m going to fix this. With you.”

Something Foggy.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm going to write eating disorder fanfic about *spins wheel* matt murdock


End file.
